Smile Like An Angel
by The-Cursed-Daughter
Summary: So many years ago, her smile was what first brought her to his attention. A young nun, standing in the courtyard of the nunnery, greeting the visiting archbishop and his adopted son.......Carlo/OC


_I just thought up the last paragraph of this story and wrote a story around it._

Kit's being stupid; she's worried it isn't any good!

_Well, it seems that way to me! Please review, we wanna know what you think! Oh, by the way, the plot follows the book, except for the end, which follows the movie._

_**Warnings: Um, none really, except for death and suicide.**_

_**Disclaimers: We own nothing but the plot and the nun.**_

* * *

He was thirteen when he first saw her smile.

So many years ago, her smile was what first brought her to his attention. A young nun, standing in the courtyard of the nunnery, greeting the visiting archbishop and his adopted son. He was thirteen, and so was she—a young girl abandoned by her parents who had come to God of her own volition, the other nuns told him.

"Come with me, Carlo," she said once told him. "Let me show you our church. It's beautiful." She paused. "You do like churches, being the archbishop's son, don't you?"

"Love them," he answered.

And she was right; the church was magnificent. Carlo dropped to his knees in front of a statue of _Theresa Benedetta_, his eyes watering. She looked so much like his mother—the one he had lost not three years ago. To his surprise, however, the nun dropped to her knees as well, her head bent and her hands clasped, murmuring a prayer for the remembrance of the dead. Carlo's heart swelled with a surprising feeling as he joined her in prayer.

* * *

He was eighteen when he realized what that feeling was.

Carlo had just come back from his service as a pilot in the Italian army, and was to be ordained as a priest the following day. This time it was the nuns' turn to visit; they were staying in a cottage on the grounds of the monastery. She was there, and Carlo finally realized what had plagued him in the army as other pilots talked of their wives and sweethearts back home.

"We can't," she told him, "It is against our vows."

Carlo had frowned, cried out in anger and slammed his fist into the wall. "If I could, I would, but I am to be ordained tomorrow."

"Well," she said, "You can't. We will not break our vows, and there is nothing more to it."

"Then what are we to do?"

She smiled; the smile that had kept him in the light for the past two years of carting the helpless to hospitals. "Pray, Carlo."

* * *

He was twenty when he saw that the answer to his prayers had been no.

It was a horrible nightmare from the past—an anti-church organization had planted a bomb in the church where a group of nuns had been praying. Among them was a twenty-year-old nun, frozen in death with an angelic smile on her face. A beautiful woman of God, gone from the face of the earth, just like his mother had been ripped from his grasp a decade earlier.

Carlo couldn't understand it; he had prayed for so long, and God had given his answer—after two years—so simply. He was a priest, studying under one of the one hundred and sixty-five cardinals of the Catholic Church, and she had been a nun—a nun with a smile like an angel's. It just wasn't God's will.

* * *

He was thirty-four when his world came crashing down around him.

How _could_ he? How could the Pope have broken his vows? His Holiness had fathered a child, had broken his sacred promise to God! A wail of anguish tore from his throat as Carlo ran blindly through the Necropolis. Had everything he had been taught a lie—had his adopted father, now the Pope, lied to him for twenty-four long years?

Carlo collapsed in front of St. Peter's grave, sobs racking his body. And suddenly, he froze; there was a voice speaking to him, just barely in the back of his mind. At first, the camerlengo thought it was God, but then he realized it was _her_, whispering in his ear what he must do, God's great plan for him.....

* * *

He was thirty-five when he cried himself to sleep for the first time in a long time.

Carlo felt his tears seep through his pillow as he knew next door the Pope would be taking a lethal dose of his medicine. As he listened to the ominous silence in the room next to his, reviewing what he was to do the next morning when he 'found' the Pope dead, the camerlengo briefly wondered if his mother would love him for what he had done. He wondered if this was the right thing to do; if there was some other way besides _murdering His Holiness_. But most of all, he wondered if _she_ would smile, laugh and tell him he was doing his duty to save the church, or if she would turn away from him, like his own father had done.

* * *

He was thirty-five years and fifteen days old when the sky exploded.

As he was dragged across the rooftops, blood flying in arcs across the sky, Carlo looked up to see the sky explode in a blast of light. The force slammed him once more into a roof, only to have his parachute jerk him up harshly by his shoulders a second later. The ringing in his ears deafened him as he was mercifully flung from the rooftops, crashing down into St. Peter's Square.

Hands pulled at the straps of his parachute, and others raised him up from the stairs where he had fallen. Voices screamed and cheered and cried, and faces blurred as dozens of people whirled past him. But to him, it was only _her_ hands and _her_ face and _her_ voice, picking him up and smiling at him and telling him that he had _done it_, he had _saved_ the Catholic Church....!

* * *

He was thirty-five years, fifteen days and one hour old when his plans crumbled around him.

Carlo kneeled on the altar in the Sistine Chapel, horror ripping and mingling with sorrow as he realized what he had done—he had murdered his own father! The camerlengo hated the statement—how was he to know that it was literal?! What would his mother say, to know that he had killed his real father, that he had truly betrayed his church and turned his back on God?

But then, _she_ was there, kneeling in front of him and holding his hands in hers. She was smiling down at him and whispering that he had to get up, that he still had to finish God's work, that there was still a chance....

* * *

And now, as he limped to the grotto, _she_ was with him, running beside him, that smile—the one he had dreamed about for so many years—gracing her features. She stood next to him as he snatched up one of the ninety-nine lamps, racing down the stairs as the Swiss Guard closed in. She whispered soft words, prayers, as she helped him douse himself with oil, and then she held him close as he threw down the flame, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as he screamed and writhed, her arms cool where the fire ripped at his flesh. The last thing Carlo Ventresca saw, as his vision faded and the pain of the fire became too much, was her smile.

* * *

REVIEW DAMNIT!

_Or else.....um, something doom-related will happen! Seriously, it takes a minute!_

_Kit &_ Violet


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